STILL NOTHING had happened. The clock of Saint-Merry had struck ten, and Enjolras and Combeferre had seated themselves with their carbines near the narrow breach in the main barricade. They were not talking; both were listening with ears strained to catch the least, most distant sound of marching feet.
Suddenly the brooding silence was broken by the sound of a gay young voice, seeming to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, raised in an improvised ditty to the tune of ‘Au clair de la lune’, and ending with a cockcrow:
Save me if I swoon, mates,
That old man, Bugeaud,
He’s not on the moon, mates,
Though he’s pretty slow.
Cock-tails* on their caps, mates,
Uniforms of blue,
The troops are in our laps, mates –
Cock-a-doodle-do!
‘It’s Gavroche,’ said Enjolras, and he and Combeferre shook hands.
Running footsteps echoed down the empty street, a figure nimble as a circus clown scrambled over the omnibus and Gavroche, very much out of breath, leapt down from the barricade.
‘They’re coming! Where’s my musket?’
An electric stir ran though the defenders and there was a sound of hands snatching up weapons.
‘Would you like my carbine?’ Enjolras asked.
‘No, I want the big musket,’ said Gavroche. He meant Javert’s musket.
Two of the sentries had fallen back and re-entered the barricade almost at the same moment as Gavroche. They were the ones who had been posted at the end of the street and in the Petite-Truanderie. The sentry in the Rue des Prêcheurs was still at his post, which indicated that so far nothing was approaching from the direction of the bridges and the markets. The Rue de la Chanvrerie, of which only a short stretch was dimly visible in the light falling on the flag, looked to the defenders like a cavernous doorway opening into the mist.
Every man took up his action station. Forty-three defenders, among them Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, knelt behind the main barricade with muskets and carbines thrust through gaps between the paving-stones, alert and ready to fire. Six others, commanded by Feuilly, waited with loaded muskets at the windows on the two upper floors of the tavern.
A short time passed and then the tramp of marching feet, heavy, measured, and numerous, was clearly to be heard from the direction of Saint-Leu. The sound, faint at first but growing in volume, drew steadily nearer, approaching without a pause, with a calm, inexorable rhythm. Nothing else was to be heard; the mingled silence and sound recalled the entrance of the statue of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni; but that stony tread conveyed an impression of vastness, a suggestion not only of an army on the move but also of something spectral, the march of an unseen Legion. It drew nearer and nearer still, and then stopped. It was as though one could hear the breathing of many men at the end of the street. But still nothing was to be seen, except, in the depths of the murky darkness, a multitude of metallic gleams, needle-thin, scarcely perceptible and constantly in motion, like the phosphorescent threads that quiver beneath our eyelids in the first mists of sleep. They were bayonets and musket-barrels faintly illumined by the distant light of the torch.
There was a pause, as though both sides were waiting. Suddenly a voice called out of the darkness, the more awesome because no speaker was to be seen, so that it sounded like the voice of the darkness itself:
‘Who’s there?’
At the same time they heard the clicking of muskets being cocked.
Enjolras responded in lofty and resonant tones:
‘The French Revolution!’
‘Fire!’ ordered the voice, and an instant glare of light shone upon the front of the houses as though a furnace-door had been swiftly opened and closed.
A hideous blow shook the barricade. The red flag fell. So heavy and concentrated was that volley that it carried away the flagstaff – that is to say, the tip of the shaft of the omnibus. Bullets ricocheting back off the houses behind them wounded several of the defenders. The effect of that first discharge was stupefying, its sheer weight enough to make the boldest man think twice. They were evidently confronted by, at the least, a whole regiment.
‘Comrades,’ shouted Courfeyrac, ‘don’t waste your powder. Wait till they show themselves before shooting back.’
‘And first of all,’ cried Enjolras, ‘we must hoist the flag again.’
He picked it up from where it had fallen, right at his feet. At the same time they heard the rattle of ramrods in the muskets as the soldiers re-loaded.
‘Who is brave enough?’ demanded Enjolras. ‘Who’s going to put back the flag on the barricade?’
There was no reply. To climb on to the barricade at that moment, when the muskets were again being levelled, was simply to invite death. Enjolras himself trembled at the thought. He repeated:
‘Does no one volunteer?’
Since they had installed themselves in Corinth and set about building the barricade no one had paid any attention to Père Mabeuf. But he had not deserted the troop. He had found a seat behind the counter on the ground floor of the tavern, and here he had so to speak withdrawn into himself, seeming unaware of what was going on around him. Courfeyrac and others had spoken to him once or twice, warning him of the danger and advising him to get away, but he had seemed not to hear them. His lips moved when no one had spoken to him as though in reply to a question, but when anyone addressed him his lips were still and his eyes vacant. For some hours before the attack on the barricade he had remained seated in the same posture, with his fists clenched on his knees and his head bowed forward as though he were staring over a precipice. Nothing had caused him to change this attitude; it was as though his conscious self were not present within the barricades. After the rest had run out to take up their position only three persons were left in that ground-floor room – Javert, lashed to his pillar, the rebel with a drawn sabre who was mounting guard over him, and Monsieur Mabeuf. But the thunder of that first volley, the physical shock, seemed to bring him to life. He jumped up and crossed the room, and at the moment when Enjolras repeated the words, ‘Does no one volunteer?’ he showed himself in the doorway of the tavern.
His appearance created a stir among the defenders. Someone shouted:
‘That’s the Man of the Convention who voted for the King’s death – the Representative of the People!’
Probably he did not hear.
Walking up to Enjolras, while the rebels made way for him with a sort of awe, he snatched the flag from the young man’s startled hands, and, no one venturing to stop him, began slowly to mount the makeshift flight of paving-stones leading to the top of the barricade – an eighty-year-old man, his head swaying on his shoulders but his feet firm. So tragic and noble was the spectacle that the men around cried, ‘Hats off!’ Each step he took was terrifying to watch, the white hair, the shrunken face with its high, wrinkled forehead, the deep-set eyes, the open, astonished mouth, the old arms lifting the red flag on high, these things rose up out of the darkness, seeming to grow larger in the ruddy glare of the torch. It might have been the ghost of ‘93 arising from the tomb and bearing aloft the flag of Terror. When he reached the topmost step, a quivering, terrible ghost, and stood on the pile of rubble facing twelve hundred invisible muskets, facing death as though he were stronger than death, the whole dark barricade acquired a new and awe-inspiring supernatural dimension.
A silence fell, of the kind that only accompanies some prodigious event; and in the silence the old man flourished the red flag and cried:
‘Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity, Equality – and Death!’
Those behind the barricade heard a distant, rapid murmur like that of a hurried priest gabbling a prayer. It was probably the Commissioner of Police delivering the statutory warning from the other end of the street. The stentorian voice which had called to them before now shouted:
‘Go away!’
Monsieur Mabeuf, white and haggard, eyes glowing with the wild light of madness, waved the flag and repeated: ‘Long live the Republic!’
‘Fire!’ ordered the voice.
A second volley, like a charge of grapeshot, crashed into the barricade.
The old man tottered on his legs, attempted to recover, then let go the flag and fell backwards like a log, to lie full length on the ground with arms outstretched. Blood was pouring from him, and his sad, pale face seemed to be looking up to Heaven.
The rebels pressed forward, forgetful of their own safety, stirred by feelings loftier than man, and gazed with respectful awe at the dead body.
‘They were gallant men, those regicides,’ said Enjolras.
Courfeyrac drew close and whispered in his ear.
‘This is between ourselves – I don’t want to damp the enthusiasm – but no one was ever less of a regicide. I knew him. His name was Mabeuf. I don’t know what got into him today. He was a brave old simpleton. Look at his expression.’
‘A simpleton with the heart of a Brutus,’ said Enjolras.
Then he raised his voice:
‘Citizens, this is the example which our elders set the young. While we hesitated he volunteered. We drew back, but he went forward. This is the lesson which those who tremble with age teach those who tremble with fear. This old man is noble in the eyes of his country. He had a long life and a splendid death. Now we must safeguard his body, each of us must defend this dead old man as he would defend his living father, so that his presence among us makes our fortress unconquerable.’
A murmur of grim approval greeted these words.
Bending down, Enjolras lifted the old man’s head and kissed him gently on the forehead. Then, handling him with the utmost tenderness, as though he feared to hurt him, he removed his coat and held it up so that all might see its bloodstained holes.
‘This is our new flag,’ he said.
A long black shawl belonging to the Widow Hucheloup was draped over Père Mabeuf’s body. Six men made a stretcher of their muskets and, with bared heads, bore him slowly and reverently into the tavern, where they laid him on the big table in the ground-floor room. Wholly intent upon the solemn nature of their task, they gave no thought to their own perilous situation.
When the body passed by Javert, who remained expressionless as ever, Enjolras said to him:
‘You – it won’t be long!’
Meanwhile Gavroche, who alone had stayed at his post keeping watch, thought he saw men moving stealthily towards the barricade. He shouted:
‘Watch out!’
Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and the others came rushing out of the tavern. They were barely in time. A dense glitter of bayonets was now visible on the other side of the barricade. The tall forms of Municipal Guardsmen surged in, some climbing over the omnibus and others coming by way of the breach. Gavroche was forced to give ground, but he did not run away.
It was a critical instant, like the moment when floodwaters rise to the topmost level of an embankment and begin to seep over. In another minute the stronghold might have been taken.
Bahorel sprang towards the first man to enter and shot him at point-blank range; a second man killed him with a bayonet-thrust. Courfeyrac was felled by another man and called for help. The biggest of all the attackers, a giant of a man, bore down with his bayonet on Gavroche. Raising Javert’s heavy musket, the boy took aim and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Javert had not loaded the musket. The Municipal Guardsman laughed and thrust at the youngster with his bayonet.
But before the bayonet could reach Gavroche the musket fell from the man’s hands and he himself fell backwards with a bullet in his forehead. A second bullet took the man assailing Courfeyrac in the chest and laid him low.
Marius had entered the stronghold.
Crouched at the turning of the Rue Mondétour, Marius had witnessed the beginning of the battle, still irresolute and trembling. But he had not long been able to withstand that mysterious and everwhelming impulse that may be termed the call of the abyss. The imminence of the peril – the death of Monsieur Mabeuf, that tragic enigma, the killing of Bahorel, Courfeyrac’s call for help, the threat to Gavroche; friends to be rescued or avenged – all this had thrown hesitation to the winds. He had rushed into the mêlée with a pistol in either hand, and one had saved Gavroche, the other Courfeyrac.
Amid the din of musket-fire and the cries of the wounded the attackers had climbed on to the barricade, the top of which was now occupied by Municipal and Regional Guards and foot-soldiers of the line. They covered two thirds of its length but had not yet jumped down into the enclosure, seeming uncertain, as though they feared a trap. They hesitated, peering into the dark stronghold as they might have peered into a lion’s den. The glare of the torch fell upon bayonets, bearskin caps and the upper part of menacing but apprehensive faces.
Marius was now weaponless, having flung away his discharged pistols; but he had seen the keg of powder near the door in the lower room of the tavern. While he was looking at it, a soldier levelled his musket at him, but as he was in the act of firing a hand was thrust over the muzzle, diverting it. The person who had flung himself forward was the young workman in corduroy trousers. The ball shattered his hand and perhaps entered his body, for he fell; but it did not touch Marius. It was an episode in misted darkness, half-seen rather than seen. Marius, on his way into the tavern, was scarcely aware of it. He had vaguely seen the musket levelled at him and the hand thrust out to block it, and he had heard the discharge. But at moments such as these, when events follow at breathless speed, we are not to be distracted from whatever purpose we have in mind. We plunge on blindly amid the fog around us.
The rebels, shaken but not panic-stricken, had rallied. Enjolras shouted, ‘Steady! Don’t fire at random!’ In that first confusion they might indeed have hit each other. The greater number had retreated into the tavern, from the upper windows of which they dominated their assailants; but the most resolute, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, had taken up their stand with their backs to the house at the end of the street, where they stood confronting the soldiers and National Guardsmen on the barricade. All this had been accomplished without undue haste, with the strange and threatening gravity that precedes a set battle. Muskets were levelled on both sides at point-blank range; they were so close that they could talk without shouting. At this point, when the spark was about to be struck, an officer in a stiff collar and large epaulettes raised his sword and said:
‘Lay down your arms!’
‘Fire!’ ordered Enjolras.
The two volleys rang out simultaneously, and the scene was enveloped in thick, acrid smoke filled with the groans of the wounded and the dying. When it had cleared both sides could be seen, diminished but still in the same place, re-charging their weapons in silence. But suddenly a ringing voice cried:
‘Clear out or I’ll blow up the barricade!’
All heads were turned to stare in the direction of the voice.
Marius, seizing the powder-keg in the tavern, had taken advantage of the smoke-filled lull to slip along the barricade until he reached the structure of paving-stones in which the torch was fixed. To detach the torch and set the powder-keg in its place, thrusting aside the paving-stones, had taken him, urged on by a sort of terrible compulsion, only the time he needed to bend down and then stand upright; and now the men grouped at the other end of the barricade, officer’s, soldiers, men of the National and Municipal Guard, stared in stupefaction at the figure holding the flaming torch over the opened keg while he repeated his challenge:
‘Clear out or I’ll blow up the whole place!’
First the octogenarian and then the youthful Marius: it was the revolution of the young following the ghost of the old!
‘If you blow up the barricade,’ a sergeant called, ‘you’ll blow up yourself as well!’
‘And myself as well,’ said Marius, and lowered the torch towards the keg.
But there was no longer anyone on the barricade. The attackers had made off in a disorderly stampede, leaving their dead and wounded behind, and were now vanishing into the darkness at the far end of the street It was a rout, and the fortress had been relieved.
His friends flocked round Marius, and Courfeyrac flung his arms about his neck.
‘So you’ve comge!’ he cried.
‘And welcome!’ said Combeferre.
‘At the right moment!’ said Bossuet.
‘I’d be dead otherwise,’ said Courfeyrac.
‘I’d have copped it too,’ said Gavroche.
‘Where is the leader?’ Marius asked.
‘You’re now the leader,’ Enjolras said.
Throughout that day Marius had had a furnace in his brain, but now it was a whirlwind, a tempest from outside himself that carried him away. He seemed to have been borne a huge distance outside life. The two radiant months of happiness ending abruptly in this inferno, the sight of Monsieur Mabeuf dying for the Republic, himself a rebel leader – all this was like an outrageous nightmare, so that it cost him an effort to realize that what was happening was real. He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand than the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen. He was observing his own drama as though it were a play he did not understand.
In his confused state of mind he did not recognize Javert, who, lashed to his pillar, had not turned a hair during the attack on the barricade and was observing the commotion around him with the resignation of a martyr and the detachment of a judge. Marius had not even noticed him.
The attackers made no further move. Although the sound of them could be heard at the far end of the street, they seemed disinclined to take the initiative, either because they were awaiting fresh orders, or because they were hoping for reinforcements before again assailing that formidable stronghold. The rebels had posted sentries, and the medical students among them were attending to the wounded.
All the tables had been taken out of the tavern except the two in use for the making of bandages and cartridges and the one on which Monsieur Mabeuf’s body lay; they had been piled on to the barricade, being replaced in the downstairs room by mattresses from the beds of the Widow Hucheloup and her two waitresses. The wounded were laid on these mattresses. As for the three luckless women whose home was Corinth, no one knew what had become of them. They were eventually found huddled in the cellar.
A sad blow had damped the students’ rejoicing at their temporary triumph. When the roll was called, one of them was found to be missing, one of the bravest and best, Jean Prouvaire. He was not to be found among the wounded or the dead. It seemed, then, that he must have been taken prisoner. Combeferre said to Enjolras:
‘They’ve got our friend and we’ve got their agent. Are you really so set on the death of this spy?’
‘Yes,’ said Enjolras, ‘but less than on the life of Jean Prouvaire.’
They were talking in the downstairs room near Javert’s pillar.
‘Well then,’ said Combeferre, ‘I’ll tie a handkerchief to my stick and go and bargain with them – their man in exchange for ours.’
‘Wait,’ said Enjolras, laying a hand on his. ‘Listen!’
An ominous rattle of muskets had come from the other end of the street. A brave voice shouted:
‘Long live France! Long live the future!’
It was the voice of Jean Prouvaire.
‘They’ve shot him!’ cried Combeferre.
Enjolras turned to Javert and said:
‘Your friends have killed you as well.’
It is a peculiarity of this type of warfare that the attack on a barricade is nearly always delivered from the front and that as a rule the attacker makes no attempt to outflank the defence, either because he fears an ambush or because he is reluctant to engage his forces in narrow, tortuous streets. The rebels’ attention was therefore concentrated on the main barricade which was constantly threatened and where the battle would undoubtedly be resumed. However, Marius thought of the smaller barricade and went to inspect it. It was unguarded except by the lamp flickering on the paving-stones. The Mondétour alleyway, and the small streets running into it, the Petite-Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne, were entirely quiet.
As he was leaving, having concluded his inspection, he heard his own name faintly spoken in the darkness.
He started, recognizing the husky voice that two hours previously had called to him through the gate in the Rue Plumet. But now it was scarcely more than a whisper.
He looked about him, but, seeing no one, thought that he had imagined it, that it was no more than an hallucination to be added to the many extraordinary vicissitudes of that day. He started to move away from the barricade and the voice repeated:
‘Monsieur Marius!’
This time he knew that he had heard it, but although he peered hard into the darkness he could see nothing.
‘I’m at your feet,’ the voice said.
Looking down, Marius saw a dark shape crawling over the cobbles towards him. The gleam of the lamp was enough to enable him to make out a smock, a pair of torn corduroy trousers, two bare feet and something that looked like a trail of blood. A white face was turned towards him and the voice asked:
‘Don’t you recognize me?’
‘No.’
‘Éponine.’
Marius bent hastily down and saw that it was indeed that unhappy girl, clad in a man’s clothes.
‘How do you come to be here? What are you doing?’
‘I’m dying,’ she said.
There are words and happenings which arouse even souls in the depths of despair. Marius cried, as though starting out of sleep:
‘You’re wounded! I’ll carry you into the tavern. They’ll dress your wound. Is it very bad? How am I to lift you without hurting you? Help, someone! But what are you doing here?’
He tried to get an arm underneath her to raise her up, and in doing so touched her hand. She uttered a weak cry.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘A little.’
‘But I only touched your hand.’
She lifted her hand for him to see, and he saw a hole in the centre of the palm.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘A bullet went through it.’
‘A bullet? But how?’
‘Don’t you remember a musket being aimed at you?’
‘Yes, and a hand was clapped over it.’
‘That was mine.’
Marius shuddered.
‘What madness! You poor child! Still, if that’s all, it might be worse. I’ll get you to a bed and they’ll bind you up. One doesn’t die of a wounded hand.’
She murmured:
‘The ball passed through my hand, but it came out through my back. It’s no use trying to move me. I’ll tell you how you can treat my wound better than any surgeon. Sit down on that stone, close beside me.’
Marius did so. She rested her head on his knee and said without looking at him:
‘Oh, what happiness! What bliss! Now I don’t feel any pain.’
For a moment she was silent, then with an effort she turned to look at Marius.
‘You know, Monsieur Marius, it vexed me when you went into that garden. That was silly, because after all I’d shown you the way there, and anyway I should have known that a young gentleman like you –’ She broke off, and passing from one unhappy thought to another, said with a touching smile: ‘You think I’m ugly, don’t you?’ She went on: ‘But now you’re done for! No one will get out of this place alive. And I’m the one who brought you here! You’re going to die. I was expecting it, and yet I put my hand over that musket barrel. How queer. But I wanted to die before you did. I dragged myself here when I got hurt, and nobody noticed. I’ve been waiting for you. I thought, “Won’t he ever come?” I had to bite my smock, the pain was so bad. But now it’s all right. Do you remember the time when I came into your room and looked at myself in your glass, and the day when I found you by the Lark’s Field? So many birds were singing! It’s not so very long ago. You offered me a hundred sous, and I said, “I don’t want your money.” Did you pick the coin up? I know you weren’t rich. I didn’t think of telling you to pick it up. It was a fine, sunny day not a bit cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh, I’m so, happy! We’re all going to die.’
She was talking distractedly, in a manner that was grave and heartrending. The torn smock disclosed her naked bosom. While she spoke she pressed her injured hand to her breast, where there was another hole from which at that moment the blood spurted like wine from a newly tapped cask. Marius looked down at her in deep compassion, desolate creature that she was.
‘Oh!’ she cried suddenly. ‘It’s starting again. I can’t breathe!’ At this moment the voice of Gavroche rang out in another burst of song like a cock-crow. He was sitting on a table loading his musket, and the song was a highly popular song of the moment:
‘When Lafayette comes in sight,
All the gendarmes take to flight –
Sauvons-nous! Sauvons-nous! Sauvons-nous!…’
Éponine had raised herself on one arm and was listening.
‘That’s him,’ she said. She looked up at Marius. ‘That’s my brother. He mustn’t see me. He’d scold.’
‘Your brother?’ Marius repeated, while in the bitterest and most painful depths of his heart he recalled the obligation to the Thénardier family laid upon him by his father. ‘Whom do you mean?’
‘The boy.’
‘The one who’s singing?’
‘Yes.’
Marius made a movement.
‘Oh, don’t go!’ she said. ‘It won’t be long.’
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius’s, she said, with a strange expression:
‘Look, I can’t cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I’ve had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn’t. I didn’t want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan’t we? Take your letter.’
With a convulsive movement she seized Marius’s hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.
‘Take it,’ she said.
Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.
‘Now you must promise me something for my trouble…’ She paused.
‘What?’ asked Marius.
‘Do you promise?’
‘You must kiss me on the forehead after I’m dead… I shall know.’
She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:
‘You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.’
She tried to smile, and died.
Marius kept his promise. He kissed the pale forehead, bedewed with an icy sweat. It was no act of infidelity to Cosette, but a deliberate, tender farewell to an unhappy spirit.
He had trembled as he took the letter Éponine had brought him. Instantly sensing its importance, he longed to read it. Such is the nature of man – scarcely had the poor girl closed her eyes than he wanted to open it. But first he laid her gently on the ground, feeling instinctively that he could not read it beside her dead body.
Going into the tavern, he unfolded it by the light of a candle. It was a short note, folded and wafered with feminine elegance, and addressed in a feminine hand to ‘Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, chez M. Courfeyrac, No. 16, Rue de la Verrerie.’ Breaking the seal he read:
My dearest,
Alas, father insists that we must leave here at once. We go tonight to No.7, Rue de l’Homme-Armé, and in a week we shall be in England.
Cosette 4th June.
Such was the innocence of their love that Marius had not even known her handwriting.
What had happened may be briefly told: Éponine was responsible for everything. After the evening of 3 June she had had two things in mind: to frustrate the plan of her father and his friends for robbing the house in the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged clothes with a youth who thought it amusing to go about dressed as a woman, while she dressed up as a man. It was she who, in the Champ de Mars, had given Jean Valjean the note warning him to change his address. Valjean had gone home and said to Cosette, ‘We’re moving this evening, with Toussaint, to the Rue de L’Homme-Armé, and next week we’re going to London.’ Cosette, shattered by this unexpected blow, had hurriedly written her letter to Marius. But how was it to be posted? She never went out alone and Toussaint, surprised by an errand of this nature, would certainly show the letter to her master. While she was debating the matter Cosette had caught sight of Éponine through the garden gate, wandering in her male attire up and down the street. Thinking she had to do with a young workman, she had called to the girl and given her five francs and the letter, asking her to take it at once to the address given. Éponine had put the letter in her pocket and the next day, the 5th, had gone to Courfeyrac’s lodging, not to give him the letter but simply, as any jealous lover will understand, ‘to have a look’. She had waited there for Marius, or anyway for Courfeyrac, still only ‘having a look’; but when Courfeyrac told her that he and his friends were going to the barricade a sudden impulse had seized her – to plunge into that death, as she would have plunged into any other, and take Marius with her. She had followed Courfeyrac to find out where the barricade was situated, and then, since she was certain, having intercepted Cosette’s letter, that Marius would go as usual to the Rue Plumet, she had gone there herself and passed on the summons, supposedly from his friend, which she had no doubt would lead him to join them. She had counted on Marius’s despair at not finding Cosette, and in this had judged rightly. She had returned separately to the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and we know what had happened there. She had died in the tragic rapture of jealous hearts, who take the beloved with them into death, saying, ‘No one else shall have him!’
Marius covered Cosette’s letter with kisses. So she still loved him! He thought for a moment that now he must not die, but then he thought, ‘She’s going away!’ She was going with her father to England, and his grandfather had refused to consent to their marriage. Nothing was changed in the fate that pursued them. Dreamers such as Marius have their moments of overwhelming despair, from which desperate courses ensue: the burden of life seems insupportable, and dying is soon over.
But he reflected that he had two duties to perform. He must tell Cosette of his death and send her a last message of farewell; and he must save that poor little boy, Éponine’s brother and Thénardier’s son, from the disaster that so nearly threatened them all.
He had his wallet on him, the same one which had contained the notebook in which he had written so many loving thoughts for Cosette. He got out a sheet of paper, and with a pencil wrote the following lines:
Our marriage was impossible. I went to my grandfather, and he refused his consent. I have no fortune; neither have you. I hurried to see you but you were no longer there. You remember the pledge I gave you. I shall keep it. I shall die. I love you. When you read this my soul will be very near at hand and smiling at you.
Having nothing with which to seal the letter he simply folded the paper in four and addressed it as follows: ‘To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, chez M. Fauchelevent, 7 Rue de l’Homme-Armé.’
Then after a moment’s reflection he wrote on another sheet of paper:
‘My name is Marius Pontmercy. My body is to be taken to the house of my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in the Marais.’
He returned the wallet to his jacket pocket and called to Gavroche.
‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Anything you like,’ said Gavroche. ‘Lord love us, if it weren’t for you I’d have copped it.’
‘You see this letter?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to deliver it. You must leave here at once’ – at this Gavroche began to scratch his head – ‘and take it to Mademoiselle Cosette at the address written on the outside – care of Monsieur Fauchelevent, number seven, Rue de l’Homme-Armé.’
‘Yes, but look here,’ said the valiant Gavroche, ‘the barricade may be taken while I’m away.’
‘The chances are that they won’t attack again until daybreak, and the barricade won’t fall until noon.’
The respite granted to the defenders did indeed give every sign of continuing. It was one of those lulls which commonly occur in night fighting, and which are always followed by an assault of redoubled fury.
‘Well, then,’ said Gavroche, ‘why shouldn’t I deliver the letter tomorrow morning?’
‘It would be too late. By then all the streets round us will be guarded and you’d never get out. You must go at once.’
Gavroche had no reply to this. He continued to hesitate, unhappily scratching his head. But then, with one of those swift, birdlike movements that characterized him, he took the letter.
‘Very well,’ he said. And he went off at a run down the narrow Rue Mondétour.
The thought that had decided Gavroche was one that he did not disclose to Marius, for fear that he might raise objections. He had reflected that it was only just midnight, that the Rue de L’Homme-Armé was not far off, and that he could deliver the letter and be back in plenty of time.